DUNDEE UNITED defender Callum Morris aims to make it a special few days in his life as his family and friends descend upon Hampden.

The Geordie turns 25 on Tuesday but it will only be a celebration if he has helped United secure a Scottish League Cup final place when they face Aberdeen on Saturday.

The centre-back, who began his career with home city club Newcastle, will make his Hampden debut and he is determined to make it a happy occasion.

"I had a few youth cup finals with Newcastle and at Dunfermline a few play-off defeats, but this is probably one of the bigger ones with so much at stake, the New Firm, and going to Hampden, it's going to be massive," he said.

"I'm just looking forward to getting there on Saturday and hopefully doing the business.

"I have watched a game at Hampden before but I have never played there. It was a youth cup final between Dunfermline and Celtic a few years ago.

"That's the only experience I've had of the place so I'm looking forward to actually getting out on the pitch.

"Half of Newcastle is coming. It's a good occasion for everyone to come up and it's my birthday a couple of days after as well, so hopefully it will be a good couple of days."

There was some doubt about whether Morris would make the squad though after being troubled by an Achilles problem this month.

But he ended his lay-off by playing 90 minutes against Motherwell last weekend as United warmed up for their trip to Glasgow with a 3-1 victory.

"It was one of those things I just had to take day by day, I didn't really have a timeframe," Morris said. "I just had to make sure it settled down.

"I'm happy I got 90 minutes under my belt and hopefully pushed enough to get a starting place for Saturday. I felt all right.

"Although I missed a few matches it has only been three weeks. It felt like six months. But I felt good and with another week's training I will be fine."

The Hampden encounter could be too close to call with only three points separating the teams in the Scottish Premiership and with both sides recording comfortable away wins in the two games between the north-east rivals this season.

And Morris will try to use both of those games to work out how to beat the Dons at Hampden.

"You cannot neglect the feelings we had after getting beat," he said. "I think it's important we put that right on Saturday. We will be taking bits from either game and hopefully putting it together and getting through to the next round.

"The positives from the first game are it was a new team, a lot of us hadn't played together before and we went up there and put a good performance in and got a clean sheet and three goals. That was brilliant.

"The game at Tannadice wasn't one of our better days but we will go into the game confident after our win on Saturday."